webcrawl/APGTE/Book-5/out/Ch-045.md.tex

\hypertarget{interlude-death-they-cannot-steal}{%
\chapter*{Interlude: Death They Cannot
Steal}\label{interlude-death-they-cannot-steal}}

\addcontentsline{toc}{chapter}{\nameref{interlude-death-they-cannot-steal}} \chaptermark{Interlude: Death They Cannot Steal}

\epigraph{``Ah, the classic imperial dilemma: which caused the other, the
rebellion or the tiger pit?''}{Dread Emperor Callous}



There were two kinds of horror to be found in war, Razin Tanja had
learned.

The first he had met and fought in the streets of shadowed Sarcella, the
dark dismay of loss being dealt by the hand of a surpassing foe. Even
outnumbered and ambushed, thrust into the backfoot, the Army of Callow
had snapped out with jaws of steel and turned what should have been a
dazzling victory into a brutal and exhausting slog of death. The heir to
Malaga had seen that same skill put to work tonight, when the foot of
the Grand Alliance had tried the enemy's fortifications. Volleys from
myriad engines of war scything through warriors of Levant and Procer
alike, long darts skewering even the most heavily armoured of soldiers.
Worse than those had been the stones of the trebuchets, whose frightful
nature lied not in the first impact but in the skill of the engineers
using it: most the time, the angle let the massive stones bounce and
keep rolling, crushing ten times the warriors even the best-aimed of
collisions would have reached. No, this Razin had all watched from atop
his horse with clenched fingers and clenched jaw but he would not
dishonour the bravery of the dead by mourning the necessity of their
deaths. They had known, these warriors, what it \emph{meant} to charge a
position held by the armies of the Black Queen. That no one of the first
wave would ever make it to the palisade, and likely none of the second
either.

They'd come forward anyway, though. Captains of Tartessos and Malaga
first, and the pride of that last one had choked him for those armsmen
had fought the Black Queen's own favoured army before, they understood
exactly what awaited yet they'd come forward without flinching, without
hesitation. Both Lady Aquiline and he had swallowed unkind words on the
subject of Proceran courage when they'd found the commanders of their
Proceran allies gambling over which of theirs would take the lead,
taking it as attempt to pass off the duty. It was good that he had kept
his tongue from wagging, though, for he learned moments later he'd had
the wrong of it. They had all volunteered, every last one. The officers,
men and women from half a dozen principalities, had turned to the dice
to settle the matter for none was willing to concede the honour of the
vanguard to another. \emph{Arlesites}, Lady Aquiline had murmured in an
aside to him, praise and condemnation both. These were of the same breed
of soldiery that'd once invaded Levant in a relentless tide of butchery.
But the two of them, one of the Slayer's Blood and the other of Binder's
Blood, could understand looking at these people why Levant had been
taken at all. Why their forbears had been needed, to humble an empire
that could boast soldiers like those. Razin was certain he'd caught one
of them -- a tanned woman of southern stock, not even thirty but already
high officer with a face that was a ruin of scars -- cheating at the
dice game used to determine who would lead.

It was such a small detail, he thought, and yet as he watched the horror
ahead he could not help but fixate on it. That woman had gone as far as
using loaded dice to claim the honour, and now she might very well be
dead. To the second kind of horror, the hateful one. The dreadful,
animal fright that came from witnessing something so far beyond you it
could not be fought. Couldn't be bargained with, or even fled. All that
was left was to kneel and pray, to hope for its own reasons it would
deign to spare your life. Razin had known that terror once before, truth
be told. It had watched him from a river's bank, wreathed in shade and
might, and judged him with cold eyes. There had been no doubt, in that
gaze, that his life could be snuffed out with a thought. No fear that
the hatred burning in his blood could ever be a peril worth regard. No,
in that moment that was the wake of death, the air still filled with the
screams of the drowning, the Black Queen had for her own unfathomable
reasons decided to spare Razin Tanja's life. The heir to Malaga had
clung to that, while his father took the Blood's Scourge to his back,
for what earthly torment could be half as shameful as the knowledge the
greatest villain of their age had \emph{not found him worth killing?}

Yet it was of that woman whose name he'd never learned cheating at dice
Razin thought of, when the drow unleashed their malevolent works, and
not of the frightful Queen of Callow. For a heartbeat it had seemed like
the assault on the palisade would be a siege as that kind of battle was
known to them: harsh and costly, but not beyond victory. Then the devils
of the Everdark had struck, and not from the palisade. The drow did not
sally out like warbands or armies. Instead they rose from the shadows
among the ranks of the Grand Alliance's warriors, and without warning or
mercy they began to slaughter. There could be no other word for it than
that, Razin thought. There were not so many of the enemy, perhaps a mere
hundred, but they were tearing through warriors like an axe through
kindling. Darkness rose in shapes and armaments, rained from above and
swept from below, a hundred different sorceries for a hundred different
drow, but whatever the singular craft each was an exquisite art of war.
Polished and without flaw, for even when dozens and even hundreds
charged at the enemy all that changed was the number of corpses made.
Within the first quarter of an hour, Razin Tanja thought, almost two
thousand warriors must have died. Not, not died.

Been swatted out of existence, like bothersome insects.

That quarter of an hour was what it took for the Grand Alliance's answer
to be brought to the fore, and all Razin could think was that it was a
quarter hour too late. The sight should have moved him, and he could
feel the sharp breaths and fervent prayers of those awed by the sight,
but even as a scattered line of priests opened shuttered lanterns the
sight of that casual slaughter stayed with him. And with the worry of
how easily they could return to such horror, should their answer fail.
It didn't, Razin saw with relief. No, instead across the entire strip of
night where the golden Light kept within the lanterns was revealed the
drow flinched. Their strange sorceries weakened, lessened in scope if
far from broken, and the Dominion of Levant began its counterattack.
Slayers, the tempestuous retinue of the Lady of Tartessos, strode
forward. Fewer than five hundred, all in light leathers and bearing the
sharp tools of their trade and their ghastly face-tattoos of green and
bronze. The Silent Slayer's own colours, and those of her Blood after
her. Above perhaps all others, the slayers of Tartessos espoused the
most ancient and honoured tradition of Levant: the killing of monsters.

Even as the deathly gifts of the Praesi engines kept raining down on the
advancing warriors, the beast-killers spread out in bands and began
plying their trade on the darkness-wielding drow. Razin's fingers had
begun to loosen, though they tightened again when one of the enemy's
trebuchet stones landed far beyond what should be possible. Then out of
the spray of earth and snow came blood-chilling laughter, and massive
figure wearing a carapace of darkness strode out. It batted the head off
a soldier almost casually, and without missing a beat began tearing
through the centre of the army's lines. This would break them, Razin
realized, mind racing as he saw what would follow. Lantern-bearing
priests retreating to weaken the monstrous drow, only to leave a hole in
the line at the front that the lesser monsters would take advantage of.
After that the slaughter would resume, and\ldots{}

``Captain Elvera,'' Lady Aquiline calmly said, turning to her second.
``You have command.''

``My lady,'' the old woman said, ``you cannot mean-''

Aquiline Osena removed a lantern from the saddlebag at her side, and
hooked it on her belt without opening it. There would be Light within,
Razin decided.

``I am of the Silent Slayer's Blood,'' Lady Aquiline replied. ``I cannot
mean \emph{otherwise}, Elvera.''

Foolish, Razin thought, for she was not just a fleet-footed slayer but
the commander of this entire host. Still, Aquiline's line was not one
known for wits. All the founders had granted different gifts to their
Blood, Akil Tanja had once told his son. Valour for the Champion,
cunning for the Brigand, skill for the Slayer, wisdom for the Pilgrim --
and that grandest of bestowals for the Binder's own, that privilege
known as knowledge. Or so the heir to Malaga thought, until he caught
the high esteem all of Aquiline Osena's captains were not watching her
with. They not only approved, Razin realized, but they had expected it.
\emph{Let neither queen nor prince rule over our dominion}, Farah Isbili
had once said. The second of the Holy Seljun, and first true ruler of
Levant, for her father had not lived to reign for long. \emph{For while
crown devour honour, one's blood is not so easily gainsaid.} Razin had
been raised to understand this as the truth of blood being the true
nobility of Creation, what set apart the wheat from the chaff. In having
a past to measure up to, a litany of deeds, the great families of Levant
were made worthy to rule. They must prove this worth anew with every
generation, true, but they always did for blood was not so easily
gainsaid. Yet now Razin thought of a woman who'd cheated at dice to earn
the privilege of being among the first to die and wondered.

\emph{Would you be proud of us, Honoured Ancestor?} the heir to Malaga
silently asked the night sky. \emph{Of the works of my father, of his
father before him and his mother before that. Will you be proud of mine,
you who stared down an empire with nothing but death and indignation
tattooed on your back?} He thought of the legends he'd been raised to,
of the five heroes who'd snapped the arrogance of Procer over their
knee. He thought of that day's own council, of Yannu Marave's blade
opening Father's throat and the vicious barbs traded by the others.
Would any of them truly be proud, Razin wondered, of what the Dominion
had become?

``Captain Fustan,'' he said. ``I give you command in my stead.''

The bearded man, most respected of his father's captains, looked at him
in surprise. So did Lady Aquiline.

``Your intent, Tanja?'' she asked.

Razin inclined his head towards the dark-clad creature in the distance,
scything through men like a sickle through wheat.

``It took five to topple an empire, Osena,'' he simply replied. ``Two
ought to be enough for a single drow, no?''

\emph{No}, he echoed in his own mind. They would not be proud, not a
single one of them.

---

That creature, Laurence de Montfort mused, was going to take a lot of
killing.

``Bring out your weapon,'' the Saint of Swords said. ``I'll even let
you, to even things out.''

A lie, that. She fully intended on sending the drow's head rolling on
the ground if it got even slightly distracted. She spoke the untruth
without hesitation, for she'd never been encumbered with the delusions
of fair play that plagued some of her peers. The moment you bared a
blade on someone with the intent to kill, there was nothing else left to
consider. Honour was just a way to pat yourself on the back, a pretty
face put on the ugliest of all weaknesses: uncertainty. Her opponent
face creased with amusement when it bared its teeth, putting in relief
the painted stripes of ochre and gold radiating from its lips.

``Why would I need one?'' it spoke in guttural Chantant. ``Children are
disciplined by hand.''

The Saint looked into the thing's silver-blue eyes and recognized the
glint within. It had fury waking up her blood. She'd last seen it on
that woman's face, when she'd glanced at Laurence's spilling entrails
and sighed without even bothering to say a word. \emph{Is that all}, the
glint whispered. \emph{Is this the sum of you?} It was the gaze of
something ancient and fearsome taking it the brief glow of a firefly
before it died, only to dismiss it as of only passing interest. She was
going to enjoy cutting this one very much, Laurence admitted to herself.
Without another word, the Saint of Swords struck. Two steps forward,
half-step to the side, her entire withered frame coiling to put full
weight behind the blow at the end. But the drow, this Rumena, it moved
just as swiftly as her.

Its hand slapped the side of her blade, and it spun low -- Laurence,
without missing a beat, leapt up. The open palm that would have slapped
her knee passed through only void, and she twisted so she could angle
her body in midair and strike once more. Instead of having its skull
split in two, the creature dropped even lower and waited a beat for the
tip of the sword to pass it. \emph{None of that}, the Saint thought, and
this was not the first time she was tasked with killing something with
better reflexes than her. The slightest piece of her Name's power had
her kicking at air with enough strength for her swing to swing back just
as Rumena began to rise, the drow immediately sinking into a puddle of
shadow and vanishing from under her. It rose again half a dozen feet
from Laurence, just as she landed lightly in her feet.

In the distance, its fellow abominations were singing its name. Behind
her, the Saint's crusaders were opening lanterns filled with golden
Light. Neither of them paid any heed to the audience, for they mattered
less than dust.

``Have your godlings taught you anything but how to flee?'' Laurence
mildly asked.

``Your pale idols are worse than wrong,'' Rumena replied just as mildly.
``They are \emph{prey}.''

They'd gotten the measure of their opponent with the first pass, so
there was no caution in how they began the second. The drow foot tapped
the ground, once, and beneath the Saint the ground blew up. She was
already in the air when it did, leaping forward, and over what felt like
hours but took less than a heartbeat she sunk into her aspect.
\textbf{Listen}, she thought, and the word reverberated through her. And
she did, the same way she had when straddling the line between life and
death all those years ago. Hearing the Ranger's footsteps as she walked
away, and only then understanding how deaf she had been all her life.
Moving against the rhythm of Creation, when she should have been moving
with it. The Saint of Swords pricked her ear, and heard the dissonant
cacophony of the drow striking at her.

She moved with purpose. A flick of the wrist created a wound for her to
push off of, angling her descent so Rumena's extended hand would pass
her flank, then another to take the arm off before the shoulder and even
as it drew back -- quick, strident tempo -- she leaned forward so the
next stroke would slice neatly through the neck. The head tumbled on the
ground half a heartbeat before she landed, but she did not sheathe her
sword. There had been no silence, no precipitous fall. The drow was not
dead. A wild, discordant slide, like a fiddle being struck, and the
Saint was almost too slow. A prick against her shoulder, like the touch
of a needle, and through that fine vessel she felt a sea of death and
decay. Millennia of red slaughter and careless rot made into a gnawing
bite. Laurence's blade cut through just enough skin for blood to gush
out, and just in time. Even half an instant later and her entire body
would have become a pile of blight and bile.

She took the drow's eye on the backswing, for its impertinence in trying
an ambush on her. Carved through the insolent blue stare with relish,
and smiled as the roiling darkness in Rumena's socket failed to heal her
cut.

``Careless,'' the drow smiled.

The song hacked out a tempo like crows cawing, and before Laurence could
move the air in her lungs turned to acid.

---

Ten of them, armed and readied and bearing a golden lantern, struck at
the beast.

Seven slayers, a binder and two of the Blood. Not even drakes and
manticores could have lightly ignored such a war party, but the
darkness-clad drow tall as an ogre moved like lightning and struck like
thunder. Razin's sword was in his hand, his breath steady, and as his
binder baited their foe he waited for his moment. A screaming salamander
made of starlight and snow screamed at the enemy, and within a heartbeat
its large head had been dispersed by a massive fist. The darkness-clad
arm went straight through and hit the ground, which was the signal. Lady
Aquiline opened the shutter and the golden Light touched the enemy. It
screamed in pain, and its carapace visibly thinned. The slayers moved,
then, feet whispering against the snow. One, two, three -- the harpoons
tore through the weakened darkness, giving solid purchase to the long
ropes tied to them. In woodlands like the Brocelian, Razin knew, these
would be fastened to trees to trap the hunted beast and restrict its
movements. Open grounds like these, though, required different tactics.
All three slayers pulled at the arm, to trip the creature forward, while
the remaining four smoothly split into pairs and moved to flank it.

``Attack,'' Razin ordered his binder, gauging the time to be right.

The woman gave no sign she'd heard him, but her horse whinnied in fright
and cold and the bound soul of the salamander dispersed, slithering back
to the tattoo it was bound to. The sorcery was replaced by an arrow-like
burst of translucent magic that flew for the drow's head, leaving the
darkness shuddering on impact. Even where he was seated, the heir to
Malaga felt a ripple go over his skin. He wondered how many thundering
roars had been stitched together, to make that curse. Whatever the
number, the spell distracted the drow even as it was beginning to
recover from its surprise. The rope-holding slayers dragged it down and
forward, and then the others struck on the exposed flanks. Long barbed
spears were thrust into the sides and cracked through the carapace. The
drow screamed again and without needing to be ordered the binder tossed
at it a blinding orb -- sunlight caught and woven. Sniffing a kill, the
slayers on the sides unsheathed their straight long sword and prepared
for killing blows.

With a deafening wail the drow's carapace of darkness detonated
outwards.

Razin paled as he saw what the wave of sorcery had wrought: the four
slayers who'd been closest were half-gone. Their leathers and armaments
untouched, but flesh and bone outright evaporated where the drow's
darkness had touched them. A grey-skinned silhouetted landed in the
snow, harpoons still in its arm, and fresh darkness bubble out of its
skin as it laughed. Blood cooling, Razin Tanja sheathed his blade and
dismounted. From his horses' side he claimed three long knives, which he
hooked to his belt, and a small orb of ivory. The binder glanced at him,
face tainted with worry at the way their hunt had turned debacle in the
span of a single breath.

``Distract it when you can,'' Razin simply said.

He rolled his shoulder -- still tender from goblin steel -- and
approached at a measured pace. The remaining three slayers were
struggling to bring down the creature before its armour-like darkness
could be formed anew, two abandoning their rope for barbed javelins to
be thrown. The drow snapped out to catch one with its teeth, breaking
the steel tip with a loud crunch before spitting out the remains, and
the other javelin went straight through. Or so it seemed, for it never
emerged on the other side. A heartbeat later it was spat back out the
drow's chest headfirst and took the slayer who'd thrown it right in the
eye. Razin winced at the sight.

``Ready, Tanja?'' a voice spoke at his side.

The heir to Malaga glanced there and his brow rose. Aquiline Osena wore
no mail not plate, only a tanned vest of leather going up to her throat.
Trousers of thick dark linen with small plates of steel sown on went
down into good leather boots, though it was not the clothes or even the
slayer armaments on her back that were the most striking part of the
ensemble. Beautiful patterns of green and bronze war paint covered not
only her face but every inch of her skin. Lady Aquiline looked half a
fae, though one born for the hunt. Razin calmly unsheathed his sword.

``Shall we, Osena?'' he shrugged.

The barest trace of a smile touched her lips.

``Let's,'' she agreed.

The drow roared, and under the golden Light of the lantern they
advanced.

---

Laurence de Montfort stumbled.

She fell to her knees, hands trembling, as she began choking on the acid
filling her lung while it burned her form the inside. Her sword slipped
her fingers, and Rumena smoothly closed the distance. Its sound in the
song was too light, the Saint thought. It was another fake, like the one
she'd killed earlier. What a cautious bastard. Mind sharpening through
the atrocious pain she was in, the Saint of Swords joined her will to
the current of Creation. \textbf{Decree}, act and outcome in the same
word. Tariq had told her this was a domain, once, but he did not
understand it like she did. It was simply her own faith, a tenet made
absolute and so perfectly harmonized with Creation. She had decreed that
`Laurence de Montfort is a sword', and so she was. It'd taken her
decades, to make this as true a part of her as flesh and breath, but in
the far north fighting the ratlings she had shaped that decree so that
it covered every part of what she was. She could have decreed more, she
knew, other rules and laws, but the purity of a single truth would have
been lost.

A sword did not need to breathe, neither did Laurence de Montfort.

A sword did not burn or dissolve, neither did Laurence de Montfort.

But a sword cut, and so did Laurence de Montfort.

The shadow-thing that the drow had sent to approach her was split in two
by a finger and she rose with her fingers steady and holding her sword.
What had once been within her was gone, for it no longer aligned with
the decreed truth of Creation, and as it had never been there no wounds
were taken. Standing in front of her, hands folded within sleeves, the
painted drow waited patiently. The eye she'd cut out was growing back --
it'd ripped out the wounded flesh so it would, the song told her.

``Come, drow,'' the Saint of Swords said. ``Let's see if your faith is
strong enough even I cannot cut it.''

``Come,'' Rumena replied, ``before \emph{one} of us dies of old age.''

---

Razin's knife slid uselessly against the dark obsidian-like carapace,
failing to find purchase even after the third time he stabbed at it. The
drow beneath shook him off effortlessly, not even paying attention, and
the dark-haired warrior only half-succeeded at landing on his feet: he
fell backwards after touching the ground, cursing, and the only thing
that saved his life was that without a pause he rolled to the side. A
bladelike appendage punctured where he'd been a moment earlier, leaving
a smoking hole in the ground.

``The eyes,'' Aquiline yelled. ``Aim for the eyes.''

She was not speaking to him but to their binder, who tossed a bolt of
hazy heat close enough to the drow's eyes that it drew back. Razin rose
to his feet, rolling his still-tended shoulder to limber it. What had
once been a humanoid carapace silhouette in a carapace, if a large one,
had since grown into something rather more monstrous. Two crablike legs
made of a strange hardened darkness not unlike obsidian now held up an
armoured torso of the same, while what had once been arms had turned to
something reminiscent of an insect. Like a mantis, Razing thought, and
damnably quick. Of the three harpoons that had first stuck the drow,
only two now remained though with the way it has shifted they now
protruded from its shoulder instead of arm.

Aquiline Osena ran across the snow, a flicker of fluid movement and even
as the drow struck out she caught the end of a rope in hand.
\emph{Slayer, silent-sworn}, he thought. Moonlight and miracle's cast
caught on her clenching arm, painted bronze and green, as she tugged at
the monster and threw a barbed javelin at its eye. \emph{Grace and
terror, peerless in hunt}, Razin remembered from the Anthem of Smoke,
and the sight was as burned into his eye. It had not occurred to him,
until then to find beauty in either the act or the woman. Now he could
not unsee it, and something in him trembled at the knowledge. The
javelin caught the corner of the drow's eye, and it screamed in pain,
but there was a cry -- the last of the remaining slayers was torn
through, and thrown at Aquiline. The rope slipped her grip, and Razin
began moving without thought. The lantern had fallen off her belt so he
tossed his knife aside and snatched it up even as she rose to her feet
behind him.

``Take the kill,'' he called out as he passed her.

The drow's obsidian eyes turned to him and it struck without hesitation,
bladed limb tearing at the ground as Razin laughed and danced to the
side. No binder he, even if the Binder's Blood, but he had spent hours
in the training yards to make up for that shame. Now those hours were
sparing his life. It leaned forward to strike again, and this time they
were so close there could be no true avoidance -- the drow ripped
through bone and shoulder flesh, but the heir to Malaga had avoided just
enough to\ldots{}

``Honour to the Blood,'' Razin Tanja hissed, and smashed the
Light-bearing lantern in its face.

A heartbeat later, Lady Aquiline's sword went straight through the heart
of the flare of light as she screamed a war cry, and wet black blood
sprayed on Razin's face. The creature fell back, its darkness collapsing
on the snow to reveal a slumping corpse with a sword through the
forehead, and the lord and lady fell exhausted on their knees to each
other's side.

``Lady Aquiline,'' he greeted her. ``You made a good kill.''

``We, Lord Razin,'' she replied, eyes hooded. ``We made a good kill.''

The look shared overshadowed even the bleeding pain of his shoulder, for
a moment, but it turned to horror when with a wet squelch the drow's
body began to heal and spat out the sword. It began to rise, as did
they, but it paused as if struck

Far above them all, light had begun to bloom.

---

It was time.

The Grey Pilgrim could feel it: if he acted now it would be an
intervention safeguarding those in his charge. Sitting with his eyes
closed, he could still feel the growing weight on his shoulders. The
vigor -- always sweet, always passing -- of a younger man filling his
body. The writ of this had not been offered to him by the Choir, it was
no tragedy unfolding caught by Mercy's myriad eyes and made known to his
own. This tale had been of his own making from beginning and it would
still be that when the end came, Gods forgive him for it. With every
death the burden on his Role, the stakes of his existence in this story,
had increased. Now, though his spirit felt like a spine on the eve of
cracking, he had the necessary reach. It was a bitter irony that the
deaths of soldiers had been the balance's harsh swing in his favour yet
the true burden he must bear had been of no consequence at all.
Catherine Foundling had given the slip to every story that could bind
her to an \emph{ending}, and so left herself only one path: reign
eternal, consumed and consuming, a herald of long prices and hard
measures having made mantle of the woes of Creation.

The Black Queen had wriggled out of every binding and shackles, broken
the sole irons he'd once set around her wrists. No redemption could be
demanded by one who had forsaken her, not even for a greater good, and
the broken oaths between them were yet another finger on the scales. Not
so heavy, he knew, that it would doom him. But she'd be always a little
luckier, a little harder to reach so long as that imbalance stood. In a
less dangerous villain that would be merely inconvenient, but this one?
She'd always had an astonishing intuition in those matters, and whatever
else the Everdark had made of her it had also made her \emph{cautious}.
Patient enough to take a step back and let others take the lead if it
meant offering fewer openings to foes like the Pilgrim.

``I wish that you had answers for me,'' he said. ``That you knew whether
in my efforts to prevent our doom I am forging the very instrument of
it.''

The Ophanim murmured in his ear, mournfully contrite. Before, in Callow,
the Choir of Mercy had been able to see through the skein of her. Where
threads may lead, choices that may or may not be. And with his own eyes,
his sight of what moved the Queen of Callow, together they had
considered what she might yet become. Now, though? There were entities
at her shoulders that did not brook such perusals. And what entities
they were, colossal towers of misery and murder stitched together with
prayers to Below. Goddesses of wails and horror, swimming in a shadowy
sea of their own kind's blood. The Black Queen had clasped hands with
these abominations, and from what he could tell done so willingly.
Knowing what he knew, not knowing what he did not, what choice was there
but the ugly business of this night? If there was even a single chance
that Catherine Foundling would be the keystone to the death of Calernia,
Tariq must ensure it would not come to be. And so now Tariq was forced
to countenance this hour of barren deaths, lest a thousandfold worse
might be allowed to pass.

The Grey Pilgrim opened his eyes, looking up at the darkness before the
dawn.

``We have sung together before, old friends,'' he softly said. ``Will
you sing with me, once more?''

Murmurs, worried.

``I will not die,'' he reminded them. ``It will hurt me, this is true.''

His gaze moved ahead at the battle where so much blood was being
spilled.

``Yet so does that,'' he said. ``And this will end it.''

Comforting hands on his shoulder, and with that assent he let out a
weary breath.

``Pilgrim of grey,'' Tariq sang.

The Ophanim hummed along, a choir distant and melancholy. A chorus of
ever-weeping eyes who were charged with ever seeing the worst of
Creation, yet still ground their fingers to the bone saving what they
could. The hummed along to the Anthem of Smoke, that song that was the
flesh and blood of Levant.

``Fleet-foot, dusk-clad, the wanderer,

His stride rebellion and stirring ember.''

It did not feel like peace, when they hummed with him. They were no
servants of that, neither Choir nor man. Theirs was the duty of steering
the world away from the brink, and none could be spared in the
observance of that work. It was an endless procession of bitter choices,
of lesser evils in the service of greater goods they might never
witness. It felt like a lullaby, gentle and wistful but never without
disquiet.

``In his grasp the light of a morning star,

Tattered his throne, tattered his war,'' they sang together.

They called it the dawn star, in the Free Cities. In Procer it was
morning's herald, in Ashur the sun's prow. In Levant, though, in the
land of Tariq's birth, though it had once been known as the morning star
it was no longer called that. It was said that the Proceran prince who'd
ruled the southern reaches of the Dominion had laughingly told the
people that naught by the sky falling would ever make the Principate
surrender its conquered prize. It was said, too, that the first of the
Grey Pilgrims had been among those listening. A mere boy, when he heard,
but he never forgot. And after Above clad him in grey, the boy become a
man returned to that laughing prince and, plucking a star from the night
sky, lit the first bonfire of rebellion from the tyrant's palace. In
Levant for many years now it had been known as the pilgrim's star: the
peregrine. Tariq was not the first Grey Pilgrim to wield it, and he
would not be the last. From the first of his Bestowal, there had been
one inheritance and in the wake of the song the old man softly offered
it up to the sky.

``\textbf{Shine},'' the Peregrine said, and the peregrine did.

Blood burning from the Light coursing through like a river, Tariq gasped
out in pain and only the merciful hand on his shoulder kept him from
collapsing. Miracle and aspect wove themselves together, the single
greatest working of his life, and his vision dimmed with exhaustion.
Above him the morning star hung in the sky, and with it dawn had come.
The drow broke, creatures of the night that they were, and the
battlefield held its breath.

``Now,'' Tariq croaked. ``Now you have no choice, child, lest they sweep
through your servants.''

She would bring nightfall where he had brought dawn, and their powers
would find each other matched. It would be neither day nor night but an
eclipse in passing, and the Black Queen would be as shattered by the
scale of it as he was. It would be a stalemate, a draw, and Gods willing
the pattern of three would be set in stone -- as would be the victory
promised to him, so grimly earned.

Instead the air tore open in front of Tariq and a man rode through.

No, not a man. One of the fair folk, astride a steed that seemed half
marble and ice, and that fae's eyes were cold where his smile was warm
and friendly. His red hair was like a streak of flame as he inclined his
head in greeting, hand never nearing the sword at his belt.

``Pilgrim of grey, I bring to you greeting and missive from my most
tenebrous of lieges,'' the fae said.

The Pilgrim rose to his feet, slowly, and took the scroll being offered
to him. It carried the royal seal of Callow, he saw. He broke it, took
the parchment from the leather and after reading the single paragraph
rocked back like he'd been hit. Surrender. Catherine Foundling was
offering unconditional surrender. It would be a great victory, if he
accepted. \emph{Victory}.

Gods damn that vicious child.